A Physician’s Guide to CAM and Cardiovascular Disease on the World Wide Web

Abstract

Most medical Web sites and dietary supplement packages, alongside their disclaimers, urge users to discuss alternative treatment options with their doctors. Surveys show it is primarily the more educated, often better informed, and higher income patients that are seeking alternatives. Discussions about complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) potentially enhance the physician-patient relationship. The situation may also pose problems for health care professionals who have been cast in the challenging role of arbiters of an integrative approach to medicine, because that integrative model has scarcely begun to be defined or understood, and the evidence base on which it will build has only just begun to be gathered. In reality, conventional medicine and alternative and complementary therapies run parallel rather than in concert.